Horus Heresy Blood Angels Indomitus Terminators

Another unit for the heresy/2nd edition inspired Blood Angels today - Indomitus Terminators. I'd actually had the Terminators sitting around in bits for years - part of a starter set I never got around to doing anything with. Handily, they're usable in heresy, and look very nostalgic painted up in their 90s colours. 

One thing I learned from painting these is that painting hazard stripes on rounded power fists is hard to get right. Other than that, I continued the same scheme as the Marines, but I did adjust a few things - like moving the blue to the crux terminatus on their shoulders and going full yellow on the helms. 

They were actually quite a quick unit to paint in the end. There are a lot of flat panels on them which took to the freehand well. 

They give me a lot of old Space Hulk vibes too which is nice. For my army's aesthetic, they actually match better than some of the heresy patterns, but maybe I'll add some at some point. 

A preview of o e of the army photos now that I've shown a couple of units:

A shot of them in combat facing down a Night Lords assault squad.

 

Horus Heresy - Blood Angels Scouts

Everybody loves scouts, they're classc. I'm happy they recently jumped ship into heresy. I think that the new primaris ranges basically ate their lunch in 40k and they had no other option, but that doesn't matter as here they are!

Part of the reason I sound so ecstatic is that my Heresy Blood Angels force are second edition themed, and this was a chance to get some real bona-fide 90s metal right up in the troops department. It's possible the other reason I'm so ecstatic is lead poisoning from handling their heavy asses, but we won't worry about that.

As long as I'm delirious I might as well also take the opportunity to point out this scenery they're on that I also painted up recently- in part to match the army and to inject a bit of colour into the field 

Plenty of photos here. I have little else to say about the work on them as they're pretty much painted up to match the army. I do rate the metal sculpts a lot higher than the plastic ones for quality and character. They're cheap as hell on eBay right now too, so if you're playing heresy I'd pick some up. 

The final picture below is from a game. I'm running them with swords and pistols like the models, but taking melta bombs and using them to try to dunk some tanks! So far I've only used them once, but they managed 3 wounds on a Deredeo, so not a bad attempt. 

 More Blood Angels to come....

Heresy Blood Angels - Tactical Squad

Once again, I'm back after a seemingly long hiatus. What you won't know is that I've been busy behind the scenes working on a batch of heresy era Blood Angels!

When the new box set dropped a month or two ago, it really peeked my interest- I've always liked Heresy, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to go all in on the "big box" - handily it was easy enough to get a hold of 2 Tactical squads and a Praetor new on sprue on eBay for just under £50 - a sort of Start Collecting set of my own devising. Needless to say, once I'd started, the collection grew and I've now painted 1150 points of stuff! (Army photos later...)

With it all building up around me, I figured I should take some photos, so here is the first Tactical squad with their Deimos Rhino in the background. I will take separate photos of the Rhinos later. 

You'll notice the colour scheme is a bit unique. When they said "Horus Heresy 2nd Edition", I just heard 2nd Edition - and hit the old 90s books for inspiration. I've never been a fan of Blood Angels and their famous gold nipple armour - the ones I loved were the bright orange, blue and yellow space vampires of my childhood, and I've tried to capture that sort of feel. The helmets are Rogue Trader inspired with their stripes. 

I did go berserk with the freehand. Each man has a striped helmet and 2 panels of either cheques or black flames that I painstakingly added by hand. They all also have numerals on their helmets on the centre stripe with the legion number as well as hazard striped saw blades. Luckily old fantasy equipped me with the powers of batch painting to see me through!

I converted the sergeant with a few choicw spare parts

My background for the colour variant is that they are a post Heresy force that has adapted a different scheme of helmets to make it less obvious for their marine opponents what their battlefield roles are, and to stop them from being able to assassinate their leaders - something like that.

 That's it for this squad - more coming soon! 

Legion Wars - The Magic of Small Games

Today I'm taking a moment to look at something I personally really enjoy, but is often stomped underfoot by larger more flashy things - small games. Some of the best games I've ever played had less than 20 models a side, and I can't count the number of Friday night 500 point games I've played.

I've even dug out some old photo's of "Legion Wars" an escalation campaign that I started with my brother when we began our respective Salamanders and Night Lords forces. As we were both starting out we decided to make a rule that we could only field painted models from our new armies and gradually worked up the cost to about 500 points in the end by making week by week additions to the forces. At first we even took away unit coherency and let every model operate by themselves as long as they were outside of 2" of each other, letting them freely form and dissolve units at will in the smallest 5 a side skirmishes.

In the increasingly big game obsessed world where you can't swing a lasgun without hitting a phalanx of allied Imperial Knights, I thought it might be time to look at the pros of small games. I've given a list below, and man, does it make me want to play a small game!

10 Reasons to Enjoy a Small Game for a Change

1. You don't have to paint as many models. Meaning you can spend more time on the ones you have and actually stand a chance at getting them finished!
2. Your infantry are more effective, as the battle will be far more focused on them and the part they play.
3. There is less room for "broken lists". In 500 points you'll struggle to fit 2 troops choices and an HQ in, let alone all those Riptides and Wraithguard!
4. Every man counts - you can't waste your units when there's no backup!
5. You don't have to buy as many models - save money and add to the collection slowly, rather than aiming for 3000 points right off the bat!
6. The narrative is better. It's just true, in a smaller game those small accomplishments are more memorable - when Captain Brellion sacrifices himself to lay a Melta-Bomb on your dreadnought and they die in a glorious blaze you'll be talking about it for weeks. Less so if the dreadnought was ruined by a pile of Centurions from half the table away, before the whole thing is incinerated by a Titan moments later with no real effort of dynamism.
7. A faster game - one you can fit in on a weeknight and still have time to relax in front of the TV (and also enough time to avoid that marital dispute that's coming because you've been taking too much time on your hobby!!). Less set up time, and less time to pack away too.
8. Easier rules - Having trouble keeping track of all those formations and blanket special rules from your opponents codex? Not such a problem when they only have 4 units on the field.
9. Drama in small places - suddenly a Dreadnought or Carnifex is a behemoth of the battlefield - with the comparative resilience of a super-heavy. You'll enjoy seeing those sometimes forgotten units shine for a change.
10. Power to the people - some of the less popular horde armies suddenly seem rather powerful, try fighting a swarm of hormagaunts at 500 points and see if you can make it past turn 3! 

Sir... something's wrong with this planet, the horizon ends 15 feet away - and did you see the size of that cat!

Unfortunately, this outflanking manoeuvre didn't really go as planned...

You'll also become a better player and learn a lot tactically when you don't have those ever-present "big guns" to back you up. When every shot counts and you've got no super heavies to do the hard work - try getting it done with an autocannon for a change, like a real man!

You have to admit - it looks dramatic already, but when was the last time you thought that when 2 scouts shot at a single marine in the open?

Without the issue of unit coherency, the squad were finally free to get some space between their noses and Sergeant Bathinko's flatulence.

I knight you Sir Decapitatallus, you may now rise.... oh wait...

Salamanders Land Speeder Storm

When I hatched the plan to make a fast attack based marine army it was based entirely around a pair of Land Speeder Storms with 2 units of scouts. A bit later on, the new codex came out and it became possible to take bikes as troops (if your leader is on a bike) and they became a bit less essential. Not that it mattered as one of the things I vowed when I started the army was that it was going to include as many units that Chaos can't field as possible (otherwise there'd be no point as I have a large Chaos force already!).


The problem with scouts has always been the really ugly head sculpts. With that in mind I went to work with a box of spare parts; replacing and variously helmeting them up to make them look a bit more appealing.


As someone who got into Salamanders during the Second Armageddon War campaign, I've never liked the "coal black" skin tone that was later given to Salamanders. I just hate the look aesthetically, so I went with a more old school tan on these guys. For most of the army I've gone with helmets to avoid the dilemma, but on scouts a few bare heads was unavoidable!

I'm quite happy with the flames on the front and the freehand "IV"s all over it.

For those who are wondering, no I didn't paint this separately. I built the whole thing, crew and all, glued it all together and painted it all as a single piece!

Some more Pictures of the army for those who missed them:

The Scout Squad in action against Ed's Night Lords

Look through the window ... a dastardly Night Lord!

Click below for more:

Salamanders

Salamanders Dreadnought

How about these pictures to keep you all amused? I've been a bit busy this week with other non-hobby related stuff, but I did find the time to snap a few pictures of my Salamanders Dreadnought.

There is a bit of conversion here as I actually made him from a Death Company Dread that I had from the Shield of Baal box. The sarcophagus is made with a spare armour plate over the top of the Blood Angels insignia and the helm is from one of those really ugly old Chaos Warriors (without the horns!).

Non Metallic Metals Painting - First Attempt

My first attempt at painting a NMM (Non Metallic Metal) sword. This is a model I painted about a year ago as a captain (with Relic Blade and Artificer Armour) for my Salamanders. I tried to follow a tutorial online, but it was for an airbrush - which basically made it useless as at the time I didn't own one. It did give me an idea of where to place the light/blends though - although it is so much more labour intensive with a brush!


Anyway, the real challenge with any NMM is really twofold. First you have to work out where the light should go on the model. Second is the challenge of actually painting it - which is mostly about building up a blend slowly to make it as smooth as possible. It's worth noting that this is a technique designed for two dimensional images (like an old painting where they've done the shining armour in greys, blacks and white or a modern day comic book hero's metallic shoulder pads).


Working with an airbrush the blends are really easy - but the accuracy isn't. If you're doing a large area or a vehicle you can get some crazy results, but the smaller your target the more finesse you'll need. My top tip is to buy a roll of cling-film. If you want to airbrush a sword on your model you can just wrap his body in cling-film and then go to town on the exposed sword without having to worry about overspray!


Back to the model at hand. I painstakingly built up the blend with layers of thin glazes. With a fine blend it's important to consider the direction you move your brush in. You should always move the brush stroke to the area where you want the colour to be it's brightest. Meaning that for mine it was always towards the highlight on the sword. For some reason the paint brush deposits the most paint at the end of the stroke, so that's why. Remember to keep the paint super thin too because you really want to avoid it building up.


Overall it's not perfect, but like I always say you have to test your limits to progress. Just keep saying to yourself "I'll do better next time" and you'll get there!


Interestingly, despite all of that effort I still get more compliments about his base. I guess it just goes to show how important bases are - have I mentioned you should be painting those too? I mean I dry-brushed the damn thing and people still notice that first!

For some actual painting advice worth reading check out my article on the basics:

Painting Basics

Mortarion Commission Part 2

Work is well underway now. I've gone ahead as planned and changed around one or two colours to get more contrast going on. So far things seem to be going well.

I snapped off a few pictures earlier today that I'll add below. The armour was airbrushed in a graduating shade off creamy off-white that I mixed myself and highlighted with pure white. When I'm airbrushing I almost exclusively use Vallejo products as they just flow a lot better in the machine. For brush work I'm using good old citadel paints.

I always begin a new project by running a test for the colour scheme - even when I'm only painting one model. In this picture you can see I've finished his leg (seen bottom right) to completion, while the rest is mostly still just base coated.

You can see in the picture above that I've taken the scheme and run with it following the successful test. I'm using red as a bright contrast to breathe some life into him compared to the nice, but very mono tonal Forgeworld one.

Still a long way to go on this one though...